by Joe Timothy | Dec 4, 2015 | News
More than 1,100 robots in the body shop at Chrysler Group’s Sterling Heights, Michigan, Assembly Plant. (Photo: Fiat Chrysler Automobiles)
One of the most common arguments for a Basic Income given by advocates is the inevitable rise in job automation and the growth in artificial intelligence, this is in part due to the powerful semiconductors that are often on circuit boards which you can find out more at places similar to Gumstix.com improve the potential for this kind of technology. In this article Jacobstein outlines his fears about the impact that A.I. will have on white-collar work. He envisages a future when the speed of development in A.I. far outweighs societies ability to create new jobs.
Jacobstein then goes on to look at the possibility of introducing a basic income under these circumstances. Although he is all for the idea, he does highlight many key aspects that may hinder the chances of such a policy being brought to fruition.
Neil Jacobstein, “The Future of Work: Managing the Benefits and Risks of Artificial Intelligence”, Pacific Standard, October 13th 2015
by Citizens' Income Trust | Dec 4, 2015 | Opinion
Benjamin K. Sovacool, Roman V. Sidortsov, & Benjamin R. Jones, Energy Security, Equality, and Justice, Routledge, 2014, xix + 213 pp.
This book is a recent product of the Vermont Law School’s Institute for Energy and the Environment’s research on how to ‘equitably provide available, affordable, reliable, efficient, environmentally benign, proactively governed, and socially acceptable energy services to households and consumers’ (p.xvii). The aim of this book is to describe current inequalities and injustices associated with energy use and make suggestions as to how greater justice might be both understood and achieved.
As the first chapter points out, we are drifting ‘into a future threatened with climate change, rising sea levels, severe pollution, energy scarcity and insecurity, nuclear proliferation, and a host of other dangers’ (p.1), and our desire for low-cost and reliable energy conflicts with the pursuit of the sustainable and cleaner environment that we also wish and need to experience. The chapter provides enough evidence for these statements.
Chapter 2 is more philosophical, and concludes that ‘energy justice’ should be based on two principles:
- a prohibitive principle: ‘energy systems must be designed and constructed in such a way that they do not unduly interfere with the ability of any person to acquire those basic goods to he or she is justly entitled’ (p.42);
- and an affirmative principle: ‘if any of the basic goods to which every person is justly entitled can only be secured by means of energy services, then in that case there is also a derivative right to the energy service’ (p.46).
Because a sustainable and clean environment and a stable climate are basic goods to which we are all entitled, the prohibitive principle requires that the damaging externalities associated with energy production must be minimized.
Anyone who doubts the environmental and climate damage being done by the ways in which we currently produce energy should read chapter 3. The damage done to health by fuel poverty in the UK and elsewhere, and the volatile and increasing cost of carbon, are described in chapter 4 – John Hills’ Getting the Measure of Fuel Poverty ought to have been referenced. In chapter 5 the socio-political dimension is described in terms of corruption, authoritarianism and conflict, which are as problematic in the so-called developed world as in the developing world. Chapter 6 charts the disproportionate way in which the poorest communities fail to benefit from energy production and at the same time suffer the most from production methods. Chapter 7 describes widespread environmental damage and finds that the extension of conventional technologies can only increase inequality.
The impression left by this book is of ubiquitous environmental damage and fuel inequality, that is, damage and inequality in the world’s wealthiest as well as in the world’s poorest countries. The answer is not new technologies: the answer is to ask who is affected by investment and pricing decisions, and to factor in the externalities when relative costs are calculated. If this is done, then solar and wind power turn out to be both more just and cheaper than nuclear power or fossil fuels.
The problem is therefore a political one – a fact that could have been made more explicit in the book’s concluding chapter.
This book should be read alongside Fitzpatrick and Cahill‘s Environment and Welfare: Towards a Green Social Policy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), in which Tony Fitzpatrick suggests that a citizen’s income could encourage economic growth and therefore greater environmental damage, and James Robertson proposes a carbon tax to fund a citizen’s income, which would encourage renewable energy production at the same time as promoting income justice and therefore fuel justice. It should also be read alongside the recent Institute for Fiscal Studies’ report Energy use policies and carbon pricing in the UK which recognizes that an increased carbon tax is needed on domestic gas use and that this would require poorer households to be compensated. The acknowledged problem here is that such a compensation package would require an increase in means-testing, which would impose additional disincentives, administrative complexity and income volatility on those households least able to cope with them.
Energy Security, Equality and Justice lacks a bibliography, which is a pity, and its index is sketchy, which will make the book difficult to use as a reference volume. But it is a well argued and carefully evidenced discussion of issues vital to our future and it deserves a wide audience.
by Vito Laterza | Oct 14, 2015 | News
Debora Serracchiani, President of Friuli-Venezia Giulia
The center-left government of the Italian region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia is about to roll out a minimum income experiment – the actual wording used in the legislation is “measures of active inclusion and income support”. It was approved in June by the regional parliament. The cabinet finalized the implementation guidelines at the end of September.
This is far from a universal basic income, but institutes a basic floor for all families below a certain income, regardless of family members’ current or previous occupational status. Families that earn 6000 euros per year or less, and have been residing in the region for at least twenty-four months, will receive a monthly sum between 70 and 550 euros for twelve months in the first instance. The monthly payment is determined by existing family income – there are six income bands – and the number of dependent children.
They can apply for a second period of twelve months, after a two months break. The award is conditional on signing an “inclusion pact”, which is a plan beneficiaries agree with social services to improve their financial situation. It can include training courses, further education and other labor market integration activities.
Local newspaper Il Piccolo reports that the scheme roll-out is expected to start in November this year. It is estimated that there are up to 10,000 beneficiaries eligible for this measure. Italian newspapers do not clarify whether this figure refers to the total number of individuals in the receiving families, or the number of applicants. Either way, it is clear that only the very poor will be covered.
Italy, like Greece and unlike most European countries, does not have a universal unemployment subsidy or a national guaranteed minimum income (GMI). A GMI scheme was piloted at the national level in the late 1990s, but discontinued in the early 2000s. Some of Italy’s 20 regions experimented with similar measures throughout the 2000s, but none of them went beyond the experimental phase. Friuli-Venezia Giulia center-left government had already instituted a five-year experiment in 2006, but the scheme was interrupted prematurely by a center-right government in 2008.
Friuli’s reintroduction of a minimum income is not an isolated case. Another region, Basilicata, adopted similar measures in recent months, and others, like Piedmont and Lombardy, are expected to do so in the near future.
Friuli’s law was promoted by the regional president Debora Serracchiani and her cabinet, and approved with votes from across the political spectrum. The center-left Democrats, who lead the regional coalition government, and their regional allies of Left, Ecology and Freedom, supported the measure, with the favorable vote of the opposition party 5 Star Movement – a populist formation with increasingly far right views about migration and borders.
The 5 Star Movement is the main opposition party in the national parliament, and has been campaigning for a “citizenship income” (a form of GMI) at the national level for some time now. In recent months, they have intensified their campaign. Popular support for a national GMI is growing, fuelled by increasing poverty and social discontent caused by the combined effect of austerity and lack of economic growth.
Matteo Renzi, Italy’s Prime Minister
Three legislative proposals to this effect have been deposited in the national parliament, but none of them has reached the stage of a parliamentary vote. The 5 Star Movement proposal is the most far-reaching of them and calls for a GMI of up to 780 euros per month. Matteo Renzi, Prime Minister and leader of the Democrats, has rejected this proposal, but promised to include in the next budget more modest measures to mitigate poverty.
If you want to find out more, here is a list of relevant sources:
Marco Ballico, “Sei ‘scaglioni’ per l’assegno antipovertà [Six bands for the antipoverty payment],” Il Piccolo, September 22, 2015.
Roberto Giovannini, “In Friuli sussidio per i poveri, i grillini votano con il Pd [Subsidy for the poor in Friuli, 5 Star Movement votes with Pd],” La Stampa, July 2, 2015.
Friuli-Venezia Giulia, “Legge regionale 10 luglio 2015, n.15 [Regional law July 10, 2015, n.15]”.
“Renzi: no al reddito di cittadinanza, per combattere la povertà serve il lavoro [Renzi: no to citizenship income, we need jobs to fight poverty],” September 30, 2015.
Josh Martin, “ITALY: Conflict over report of a basic income experiment in Lombardy”, Basic Income News, May 18, 2015.
For a brief history of GMI experiments in Italy, see Varvara Lalioti’s academic article “The curious case of the Guaranteed Minimum Income (GMI): highlighting Greek ‘exceptionalism’ in a southern European context”, forthcoming in the European Journal of Social Policy. An earlier version is available here.
by Timothy Roscoe Carter | Sep 22, 2015 | Opinion
[The following is an excerpt from a book in progress, The Poverty Abolitionist’s Handbook.]
Q: But who will clean the toilets? If everyone has an income sufficient to meet their basic needs, even if the vast majority of people want to do some productive work, what incentive will there be for anyone to do all the dirty and dangerous jobs that need to be done for society to function?
A: That is an evil and aristocratic question. How will we find cheap labor to do the nasty jobs we want done, but don’t want to do ourselves, if we don’t starve some unimportant people who refuse to do them for us? This question is the labor equivalent of the question a Democratic California State Senator in the 1970s asked a group of feminists who were petitioning for the removal of the marital rape exemption: “But if you can’t rape your wife, who can you rape?” Or the plantation owners at the end of the Civil War who demanded to know who was going to pick their cotton.
You want to know where the incentive to do dirty jobs will come from? How about the free market? If you offered enough money you could probably get Warren Buffet to clean your toilet. You want your toilet cleaned? You do not want to do it yourself? Then just pay someone else who is not afraid of starving whatever it will cause them to clean it for you. You don’t have enough money? So sad. You probably do not have enough money to buy your own private jet, do you? That’s life. Though, you can look at the private jet rental cost instead in the meantime, so it isn’t all bad, right?
Note: This answer is a rant, but the question deserves it. Admittedly the *questioner* probably does not deserve the rant. There was a time only a half-century ago when the idea of prosecuting a man for raping his own wife seemed absurd. It seemed absurd to a man raised to believe it was his wife’s duty to cook, clean, and to give sex to her husband, and he did not think about the unfairness to the wife any more than most of us think about the unfairness to the chickens we eat. If you had a visceral defensive reaction to the idea that there is something unfair about eating chickens, then you can at least have some sympathy for the man who thinks it is his right to rape his wife. If you object that there is a huge degree of difference between the unfairness of eating chickens and the unfairness of raping wives, well, I would agree with you. (Full disclosure: I eat chickens.) Of course, the person who wants to force others to clean his toilet cheaply or starve would also see a huge difference between that and rape. And note that prosecuting men for raping their wives also seemed absurd to a lot of women who believed they were being good wives by submitting to their husbands, and saw – probably unconsciously – removal of the marital rape exemption as an attack on an identity that they based their self-worth on. And many people asking who will clean the toilets will actually be people who have themselves worked demeaning jobs at exploitative wages to provide food for their families and take pride that they did what they had to do to survive. Such people may see a basic income as an attack on their self-worth and personal identity in a manner similar to the good wife who finds it absurd to prosecute a man for “raping” his wife. So calling out such questions as evil probably does real harm to people who do not really deserve it. But to treat such questions as reasonable does the harm of conveying the idea that they are in fact reasonable questions. The only way to teach the wider public, and most importantly rising generations, that it is contemptible to ask who will pick your cotton if not slaves, or who a man can rape if not his wife, or who will clean the toilets if not people who would otherwise starve, is to treat the question with the contempt it deserves. If you absolutely must answer the “But who will clean the toilets?” question in a diplomatic way, you can substitute the answer to the next question about the effect of a basic income on wages. I still do not recommend it, because I believe it to be more important to call out the assumption that it is acceptable to force some people to do dirty jobs for others cheaply under threat of starvation.
Q: What would be the effect of a basic income on wages?
A: Overall there would likely be a moderate upward pressure on wages and possibly a slight leveling effect. The “permanent strike fund” aspect of a basic income would give most workers more bargaining power and cause wages in general to rise modestly. The wages of workers doing unpleasant and unskilled work would likely rise dramatically as no one will be forced into doing those jobs. The wages of skilled professionals such as doctors, accountants, plumbers, and electricians would likely fall as more people could take the time necessary to qualify for those positions. If the basic income was at a level sufficient to abolish poverty, the wages for pleasant unskilled work might fall, as it might be reasonable to rethink the need for a minimum wage. The leveling effect of a basic income is unlikely to reach a point where it will make financial sense for a law firm to require attorneys to take turns cleaning the office bathrooms, because then fewer people would likely become attorneys. But if it does, so be it. This makes it even more difficult when looking towards retirement, with many looking to work straight into retirement to help themselves financially. Others find that they are looking towards their equity for any help with retirement finances with some using something like this equity release calculator to find out how much they have and will be able to live on during their retirement.
Q: How will a basic income affect economic growth?
A: There will likely be overall positive economic growth resulting from a basic income, as it would end up as a net transfer of money from people who either hoard or invest most of their wealth to people who spend most of their wealth. Hoarding wealth is always bad for the economy, while investing wealth is a gamble that could grow the economy if there is demand for the investment, or squander wealth if there is not. If people have a guaranteed monthly income then they will be more likely to invest in local businesses, look at motley fool reviews and invest in the market, and put the money back into the economy. Spending money manifests demand, and so always helps the economy. Of course, the basic income does have to paid for, and so the economic effects of whatever tax scheme is proposed to pay for must be taken into account. Taxes on both income and consumption discourage economic activity and could counter the increased demand generated by the basic income. However, taxes on land, natural resources, and wealth capture rent, discourage hoarding, and encourage economic activity by forcing those who hold wealth to either use it or lose it.
Note: Philippe Van Parijs, one of the top living figures in the basic income movement, says that when we are asked this question, we should not answer it. There has been no way to empirically test the general question, there have been apparently contradictory results from empirical studies of the effects of a basic income on labor force participation, and economic growth is not the main point of a basic income. Even if it were good for overall economic growth to force 5% of the population to starve, this is not a world we want to live in. However, I believe that reasonable speculation can provide us with a plausible, positive, and useful answer, so I have provided one. But remember, you take my advice over his at your own risk.
Q: Isn’t the claim of technological unemployment just the Ludite fallacy?
A: Well, it is until it isn’t. It is not hard to imagine a society where the vast majority of jobs can be done more efficiently by machines, and the the few jobs that require humans are made so efficient by machines that only a minutely small number of humans are needed to do them. Eventually, this seems inevitable. The only question is whether it will come 20 years from now or 200 years from now. Evidence that it is coming sooner rather than later can be seen in the breakdown of the arguments against technological unemployment. Traditionally, economists have said technology creates more jobs than it eliminates via two primary mechanisms. First, jobs move from one sector to another. Second, higher skilled jobs are created to oversee the machines. So, a thousand years ago, most people worked in agriculture growing food. As technology made it possible for a few people to produce enough food for the many, people moved to factories. By 150 years ago, most people were working in manufacturing making goods. As manufacturing became more efficient, people moved into the service industry. But now, we are running out of sectors. And the jobs currently being threatened by technology include not just low-end work like cashiers and laborers, but highly educated work like accountants and pilots. The rate at which technology eliminates jobs may have already surpassed the rate at which it creates jobs.
Q: Are there other ways to deal with technological unemployment besides a basic income?
A: Yes. There are six.
1. We could allow massive numbers of people to starve.
2. We could guarantee jobs that do nothing useful for society and just waste the time of the employee, such as digging holes and filling them back up again.
3. We could institute a 15-hour work week and a $25-per-hour minimum wage.
4. We could start banning new technologies.
5. We could force everyone to become a cyborg. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.
6. We could give everyone computers and robots to rent out, making everyone a capitalist. Of course, their machines would need to be constantly upgraded to prevent obsolescence, some people would make bad choices, and some people would have their business go under through no fault of their own. Which means we would then need to accept mass starvation or strictly regulate how people run their robot rental rental businesses or give people new machines on a regular, periodic schedule.
Or we could just give everyone a basic income.
Q: Isn’t this just communism?
A: Actually, Milton Friedman and F.A. Hayek, two of the three most important libertarian economists in history, supported a basic income. Meanwhile, the most famous person to declare that those who don’t work don’t eat was Vladimir Lenin. So in this discussion, I am the one supporting the policies of Milton Friedman, and you are the one supporting the policies of Vladimir Lenin. But please, go back to calling me a communist.
Note: This answer is snark, but the question is not serious. The serious answer is that forms of a basic income guarantee are compatible with both capitalism and socialism/communism, and that fact helps to demonstrate that “capitalism ” and “socialism” are both incoherent terms. But over usually when you hear this question, it is not a serious inquiry but an ad hominin attack. The point of the answer is simply to injure the attacker’s credibility with onlookers by demonstrating that they simply do not know what they are talking about. Bonus points if they have to ask you who Hayek, Friedman, or Lenin is.
Q: Why should working middle class people support a basic income?
A: The first reason is money. Due to extreme rates of income and especially wealth inequality that exist today, under nearly all proposed tax schemes to pay for a basic income, the vast majority of working middle class people will be net beneficiaries. But even if you are near the break even point in the upper middle class, you should support a basic income for the same reason that healthy people should support universal health insurance: You are not invulnerable. You could lose your income and all the wealth you have spent years building up through your own bad decisions, the bad decisions of the C.E.O. of the company you work for, the bad decisions of a politician, a natural disaster, an economic recession, or getting hit by truck and left with back pain that leaves you in bed five hours a day but is invisible to a disability judge. And even if disaster never strikes you, the knowledge that it could strike you constrains your freedom. When you plan for the care of an aging parent, you know how precarious your finances are. When you dream of starting your own business, you know how precarious your finances are. When you consider taking time off for a vacation or to go back to school or to finish an art project, you know how precarious your finances are. When you ask your boss for a raise, *he* knows how precarious your finances are. Now imagine making all of those choices if you knew you had a basic income.
by Andre Coelho | Sep 10, 2015 | News, Research
After the resounding commercial and critical success of Thomas Piketty’s book “Capital in the twenty-first century”, the author himself responded, in the form of an article in the latest release of Basic Income Studies, to critics and to proponents of Basic Income (BI). As Michael Howard puts it in the introductory paper of the referred edition of Basic Income Studies, “he is wary (…) of treating a cash transfer as a ’magic bullet’.”. However, Thomas Piketty has been a defender of progressive taxation and some forms of BI ever since 1997, particularly the negative income tax (NIT). Although he remains consistent with his prior views on the role of the welfare state, he supports “universal cash transfers for dependent children” and “basic income for all adults with insufficient market income.” Nevertheless despite disagreements, he views basic income as a valid subject of discussion.
In the same Basic Income Studies volume, other authors discuss Piketty’s book from various perspectives. For instance George Grantham evaluates whether Piketty’s view can be reconciled with mainstream economics, while acknowledging that capitalism is surely compatible with a modest basic income. Also Louise Haagh in her article underscores, like Piketty, that BI is not a magic bullet, but indeed an important component for a progressive agenda which promotes social equality and development. In turn, Karl Widerquist stresses that not only entrepreneurs have a tendency to become rentiers but also that inequality depends both on the difference between the rate of return of capital and growth rate of the economy (the famous “r > g” inequality) but also on how much capitalists actually spend in the economy. He adds that, besides progressive taxation, resource taxes should also be imposed, coupled with some form of resource dividend or basic income.
All these authors, among some others that also shared their views on “Capital in the twenty-first century” in the latest issue of Basic Income Studies (Ruben Lo Vuolo, Geoff Crocker and Harry Dahms), essentially agree that social problems are caused by inequality and that new forms of redistribution (or reinforcement of present forms) are essential to restore social balance, or at least reduce inequality for the time being. In the background, remaining to be addressed is the dark cloud of political control, at the moment very much tilted towards the wealthiest members in our society.
Basic Income Studies (cover)
More information at:
Thomas Piketty, “Le Capital au XXIe siècle [Capital in the twenty-first century]“, Catalogue Sciences Humaines et Documents SEUIL.com, September 2013
Ed. by Haagh, Anne-Louise / Howard, Michael, “Basic Income Studies“, De Gruyter, 2015
Credit picture CC Universitat Pompeu Fabra
